Timothy dunn

Birthday: December 1955

Hometown: Littlefield, TX

Primary residence: Midland, TX

Current role: CEO of CrownQuest Operating ad CrownRock LP (1996-Present)

Net worth/salary: At least $1.5B (according to Forbes)

Education:  Bachelor’s Degree from Texas Tech University 

Board memberships, affiliations, and roles:

• Board Member at the America Policy First Institute

• Director, Convention of States

• Vice Chairman of the Texas Public Policy Foundation

• Member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE)

• Director of the First Liberty Institute

• Co-founder of Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG)

• Vice Chairman of the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute

Past roles: 

• Executive Vice President and Partner at Parker & Parsley Petroleum (1987-1995)

• Engineer at Exxon Research & Engineering (1978-1980)

• Engineer at ExxonMobil (1978-1980)

• Chairman at EnerQuest Oil & Gas

• Partner at Texas Land & Royalty

Interesting facts:

• Dunn was listed at #44 on a list of “Israel’s Top 50 Christian Allies for 2022”, due to his role as chairman of the Christian Advisory Board of the Israel Allies Foundation. 

Oil dominance

• Dunn’s oil company CrownQuest has been described as the biggest and most productive oil field in the United States, pumping 140,000 barrels of oil per day and 35 million barrels a year in West Texas. In 2007, Dunn started his own PAC to fight a tax on oil wells, which went on to fund a variety of conservative politicians in Texas. 

Climate denial and misinformation 

• Dunn is the director of a nonprofit called The Convention of States, which hopes to diminish the power of the federal government and help strengthen the fossil fuel industry’s power.  It describes global heating as a “hoax,” stating on its website that “the claim that 97% of scientists agree that climate change is man-made is patently false” and fracking “can only be a good thing for our living conditions and geopolitical considerations.”

• In December 2023 Dunn signed an agreement to sell his his fracking company, CrownRock, to Occidental Petroleum in a deal valued at $12.4 billion, allowing him more energy and money to contribute to his political interests. Occidental Petroleum has now finalized the deal for $10.8 billion and agreed to take on $1.2 billion of the company’s debt. Dunn is estimated to personally receive $2.2B from the deal.

• According to WealthX, Tim Dunn co-owns a 2022 Cessna Citation Latitude Business Jet, with his share estimated to value $800,000. He lives in a 6,000 square foot mansion on a twenty-acre walled compound. Three of the Dunn’s sons have built multi-million dollar homes on the compound. 

• In 2013, Tim Dunn was honored as “CEO of the Year” by the Texas Independent Producers & Royalty Owners Association (TIPRO) and Texas Monthly Magazine. 

• CrownQuest Operating LLC is an oil and gas company that oversees the assets of CrownRock, a shale drilling company based in Texas. In August of 2024, Tim Dunn, CEO of CrownQuest Operating, finalized a $12 billion deal to sell CrownRock LP to Occidental Petroleum Corp. The deal plans to increase Occidental’s acreage in the Permian Basin, which has been called the “most prolific U.S. oilfield.” The deal also plans to produce an additional 170,000 barrels of oil, which would make Occidental a “top-3 Permian producer.” Occidental Petroleum Corp produced roughly 527 million barrels of oil equivalent  in 2022 and has $66,531M in total investments. 

• According to a study done by the Environmental Defense Fund, CrownQuest Operating was ranked as number 15 for the “rate of Permian gas wasted by top 15 oil producers” for the years of 2014-2015.

• Timothy Dunn has also helped found and fund the America First Policy Institute, a right wing think tank that has helped shape the anti-climate change policy agenda for the second Trump administration. Brooke Rollins, the president of the Institute and one of Dunn’s allies in Texas, has called for the U.S. to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and applauded the administration’s attempts to repeal the Clean Power Plan.

• “He’s going to be against anything that falls into what he sees as environmentally woke, and he will put his money where his mouth is.”- Matt Angle, founder of the PAC the Lone Star Project which promotes the election of Democrats in Texas.

• “I can’t imagine anything more dangerous to the planet than Tim Dunn shaping our climate policy as a country.” - James Talarico (D), Texas State Representative.

• The Former Texas House Speaker Joe Strauss publicly confirmed that Dunn once told him, “only Christians should hold leadership positions in the lower chamber.” Strauss noted, “It was a pretty unsatisfactory meeting…We never met again.”

• “Apparently, the Left is equating the term ‘Christian Nationalism’ with authoritarianism. This makes the term not only unbiblical but un-American.” - Tim Dunn in response to being called a leader in Christian Nationalism, 2024.

• “Overbearing bureaucracies try to impose upon decisions that Americans have long made for themselves. This includes how we should speak and what kind of fuel we are allowed to use to cook our food. We should resist any such concentration of power, regardless of what label it goes by or whom among us holds the power.” - Tim Dunn, 2024. 

• “It would be ideal if we could get rid of this ‘CO2 as a pollutant’ business… I hope we have an E.O. (executive order), every E.O. we can, to curb all this silliness about CO2 emissions.” - Tim Dunn during an event hosted by America First Policy Institute in 2023.

• “Carbon dioxide causes the plants, the Earth, to green. It's not a pollutant. If you want your plants to grow twice as fast, you pump CO2 into your greenhouses.” - Tim Dunn, 2023. 

• “The extremists want to deindustrialize America… They want to live in huts around a campfire.” - Tim Dunn, 2022.

• “They are becoming bolder and more brazen in their quest for tyranny…It’s becoming clear they want to kill us.” -Tim Dunn on “elites” and “Marxists, 2022.

• Dunn once told Former Republican Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, that “only Christians should hold leadership positions” -Tim Dunn, 2010

Government ties 

• Dunn has used his oil fortune to funnel money to conservative candidates and alter the 21st century’s political landscape in Texas. In Texas, “every single far-right policy can be tied back” to Dunn and billionaire oil industry leader Ferris Wilks, said state Rep. James Talarico. “When Dunn and Wilks win, they win”, Texas state Rep. Glenn Rogers said, “and when they lose, they still win, because the people left in office are afraid to disagree with them. You can’t be in politics long without being influenced by them in one way or another.”

• Dunn drives an expansive political machine in Texas, funding Empower Texans, Defend Texas Liberty, and Texans United for a Conservative Majority. His network was instrumental in multiple primary victories in 2024. Today, the Texas GOP relies primarily on funding from Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, whose 2023 donations made up roughly 25% of the party’s funding for the year. They donated a combined 1.2 million dollars during Matt Rinaldi’s time as chairman of the Texas GOP, during which Rinaldi frequently attacked Wilks’ and Dunn’s political enemies. 

• Texas Megadonor and critic of Dunn’s “dishonest campaign tactics” Alex Fairly said “[Dunn’s network] is the place where you can get money, whether it's their money or their friends' money,” Fairly said he told George. “But … the thing that you live on is choking the life out of you.”

Far-right extremism 

• Dunn is the longtime vice chair of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which produced some of Trump’s first-term nominees and is contributing to the policy blueprint for Project 2025. Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts is the Foundation’s former leader. Brooke Rollins, Trump’s former White House aide, led the Texas Public Policy Foundation for 15 years before entering the White House. 

• Dunn is also a large donor to and director of the controversial Convention of States Project, which would enable states to alter the constitution if they received a majority of votes. This initiative is self-described as “the people’s final “check” on D.C., exercised through their state legislators; the ingenious plan of the Founders to make state legislators’ ambitions (for state power) counteract federal officials’ ambitions (for federal power)–for the good of the people.” This far right project is supported by billionaire fossil fuel moguls like the Koch brothers, and it would dismantle federal laws and attempt to permanently write Christian nationalism into the Constitution. 

Donations

• In 2025, Tim Dunn gave $5M to the Great Lakes Conservative Fund (GLCF) to help elect Mike Rogers as Senator in Michigan, accounting for over 98% of the PAC’s fundraising in the first half of the year, according to its July 31 FEC filing.

• Tim Dunn has contributed millions to far right-wing political candidates and groups, and donated $5M to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign via Make America Great Again Inc. According to the Washington Post, Dunn donated $35.5M during the 2024 election cycle, ranking at number 25 out of 50 top donors. Dunn donated $18 million dollars in 2024 alone to SuperPAC Jefferson Rising Fund, which campaigned against Democratic candidates in tight Senate races in Montana, Wisconsin, and Arizona.

• Since 2000, Dunn has donated at least $29 million dollars to conservative campaigns in the state of Texas, likely a large reason why political candidates and platforms have shifted to align with Donald Trump and Christian nationalism. Dunn has donated to Defend Texas Liberty PAC, a PAC for conservative political action in Texas several times. These donations have pushed the Texas state house further to the right. 

• Dunn helps fund America First Legal, a conservative law firm headed by the former Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller.